Over 40 percent of people in Bangladesh have no access to safe drinking water, while more than 60 percent lack safely managed sanitation facilities, according to a new report from World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef.

The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report, entitled “Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 – 2020”, presents estimates on household access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services over the past five years worldwide.

According to the report, billions of people around the world will be unable to access safely managed household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services in 2030 unless the rate of progress quadruples.

In 2020, around 1 in 4 people lacked safely managed drinking water in their homes and nearly half the world’s population lacked safely managed sanitation.

In Bangladesh, 68.3 million people are deprived of safely managed drinking water, while 103 million people do not have safely managed sanitation facilities.

The report assesses progress toward achieving the sixth sustainable development goal (SDG) to “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030”.

For the first time, the report also presents emerging national data on menstrual health.

Covid-19 has highlighted the urgent need to ensure everyone can access good hand hygiene. At the onset of the pandemic, 3 in 10 people worldwide could not wash their hands with soap and water within their homes.

“Handwashing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and other infectious diseases, yet millions of people across the world lack access to a reliable, safe supply of water,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Investment in water, sanitation and hygiene must be a global priority if we are to end this pandemic and build more resilient health systems.”

The report notes some progress towards achieving universal access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services.

Between 2016 and 2020, the global population with safely managed drinking water at home increased from 70 percent to 74 percent, safely managed sanitation services grew from 47 percent to 54 percent and handwashing facilities with soap and water went up from 67 percent to 71 percent.

The report makes clear that, if current trends persist, billions of children and families will be left without critical, life-saving WASH services.

The report found 61.7 million people in Bangladesh were deprived of basic hygiene facilities, representing close to 3 percent of the global burden.

(SAM)